On March 20, 2003, the United States led a coalition force into Iraq. Five years on, the effects of that action are still being assessed.

Amnesty International describes the human rights situation in Iraq as “disastrous”. In “Carnage and Despair: Iraq Five Years On,” Amnesty chronicles a country plagued by poverty, high unemployment, food shortages and a lack of access to potable water.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the country’s deepening refugee crisis. It is estimated that four million Iraqis—14 percent of the country’s population—have been displaced by the war, including the two million who fled sectarian conflict.

Richard Perle was a prominent Pentagon adviser in the run-up to the war and a vocal advocate for invasion. Writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Perle says that he and his colleagues failed to foresee how difficult it would be to put the country back together.

“We blundered into an ill-conceived occupation that would facilitate a deadly insurgency from which we, and the Iraqis, are only now emerging,” Perle writes. “With misplaced confidence that we knew better than the Iraqis, we sent an American to govern Iraq. L. Paul Bremer underestimated the task, but did his best to make a foolish policy work. I had badly underestimated the administration’s capacity to mess things up.”

Amid the predominantly gloomy reflections, one BBC story offers a ray of hope. A recent poll suggests that “more than 50 percent of Iraqis think their lives are good, more than at any time in the last three years.”

Amnesty International says that the human rights situation in Iraq five years after the American invasion is “disastrous.” It also pegged Iraq as one of the most dangerous countries in the world in its 24-page report, “Carnage and Despair: Iraq Five Years On.”

The Wall Street Journal calls Iraq a “nation of refugees.” An estimated four million Iraqis, or over 14 percent of the country’s population, have been displaced, including the two million displaced within the country due to sectarian violence. U.S. officials say that they are acting to address the “deepening” refugee crisis.

“More than 50 percent of Iraqis think there lives are good,” reports the BBC, “more than at any time in the last three years.” That is the conclusion of a poll conducted by the BBC and other agencies among 2,000 Iraqis.

The war in Iraq has badly damaged America’s international image, says Voice of America. It cites opinion polls that show international approval of the United States at an all-time low, and notes that anti-U.S. demonstrations have become common across the world. Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa said that America’s image has suffered most in the Arab world. “The situation is going from bad to worse when it comes to the image of the U.S. The feelings, the friendly feelings that prevailed for so many years in the Arab world vis-à-vis America and vice versa—but the recent developments in fact have derailed those relations and those feelings.”

Rageh Omaar, who reported for the BBC following the fall of Saddam, recently returned to Iraq. “Yet five years on, and millions of hours of news footage and front-page stories later, Iraq is still not only a bitterly divisive issue, it is also a conflict about which the most elemental questions have not been answered. In which ways has this war—in which our country’s name will forever be tied—changed the lives of ordinary Iraqis?”

The Daily Times of Pakistan says in an editorial that the Iraq war has damaged both the United States and the world’s Muslims. “Given the resilience of the world’s largest market economy, the U.S. is expected to self-correct and bounce back, but the Muslims of the world might find it difficult to rise from the ideological crevasse into which they have fallen. ‘Democracy’ administered in Iraq like a medicine after 30 years of living under despotism has succeeded in solidifying three mutually hostile groupings in Iraq.”

Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post calls Iraq “the moral quagmire of the past quarter-century” for American politicians. He criticizes the current presidential candidates for lacking candor on the situation and warns that they cannot afford to skirt the difficult questions in Iraq. “The Iraq trap now reaches out to ensnare those Americans who would be president,” Hoagland says. “It invites Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain to be expedient—instead of being frank—about the problems ahead. They are tempted to avoid serious discussion on the campaign trail by portraying the moral choices on Iraq as easy and clear instead of acknowledging them as the tangled knots they are.”

Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research says that although he thought “the right decision was made” to invade Baghdad, he could not have foreseen the disastrous aftermath. “We blundered into an ill-conceived occupation that would facilitate a deadly insurgency from which we, and the Iraqis, are only now emerging. With misplaced confidence that we knew better than the Iraqis, we sent an American to govern Iraq. L. Paul Bremer underestimated the task, but did his best to make a foolish policy work. I had badly underestimated the administration’s capacity to mess things up.”

Max Hastings of The Guardian says that the Iraq War has illustrated the limits of raw military power, and that the next U.S. president must reject Bush’s “juvenile” vision, reach out to Iran and seek justice for the Palestinians.

The war has been fading as a TV news story, with emphasis turning to the presidential campaign and the economy, reports The Associated Press. “It’s no big secret that this is a war that everyone has grown tired of,” said CNN correspondent Arwa Damon. “Iraqis are aware of it. They think it’s a story that people are tired of hearing about. That’s what makes our job more crucial.”

President George W. Bush addressed the nation on March 19, 2003, to declare that America had gone to war with Iraq: “Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly—yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.”